HHC shares insight of COVID-19 pandemic

The Robins Regional Chamber had hopes, by now, to host its Eggs and Issues event in person, but due to the current executive order of the state not allowing a gathering of more than 50 people, the chamber, once again, held the event virtually.

Thursday’s event featured Houston Healthcare’s President/CEO Charles Briscoe and COO Dr. Mindy Hartley. Both Briscoe and Hartley shared insight of what Houston Healthcare has experienced and worked through the COVID-19 pandemic as well as a current update of how operations are going today.

Briscoe said they are currently seeing a downward slide, but expressed they are not letting their guard down as flu season is approaching.

“First, I want to thank our great staff and local health care neighbors for all of their hard work and collaborative efforts,” Briscoe said. “We have all really leaned on each other to get through this very difficult year. As far as our current numbers, it’s an improving picture, but the virus is still here, and flu season is upon us, so we definitely are not letting our guards down. Currently, we have 15 COVID-19 inpatients and about a third of those are in our Intensive Care Unit. We are hopeful to see those numbers come down even more, but we are asking the community to continue to follow CDC guidelines by wearing a mask, social distance, wash your hands and clean work surfaces frequently.”

Hartley shared that in the beginning, back in March, there was a lot of fear with not only the community, but also the staff. She said Houston Healthcare took quick measures in screening people at the doors and only having certain doors open for access to limit exposure.

“It was a very intense time in the beginning as we all did not know much about this virus. But we, Houston Healthcare, quickly took some steps and put procedures in place to help limit the exposure, and we believe, looking back, that helped us a lot,” Hartley said. “And as time went on, it became more manageable because we had a team that specifically was conducting research every week and briefing the staff. I could go on and on for hours, but truly our staff is tremendous and innovative.”

Hartley also shared how tremendous the community has been with the support and donations they have given. Meals were provided everyday, gift cards, masks and other PPE (personal protective equipment) and more.

“There was not one day, and really not one moment, where our staff did not feel any support,” Hartley said. “There were prayer vigils weekly where the community would come to our parking lots and pray and hold signs that said thank you. We also had daily videos with words of encouragement from different mayors, pastors, teachers, police officers, firefighters and business owners. It truly meant the world to our staff, and we can’t say thank you enough.”

When asked by April Bragg, President/CEO of the Robins Regional Chamber, what has been the most challenging matter during the pandemic, Briscoe said immediately two things come to mind, which were PPE and Houston Healthcare’s amended visitation policy.

“Of course, everyone heard through the national news about the struggle for hospitals in finding PPE,” Briscoe said. “There’s truth to that. We had some struggles, but we brought together a more detail level of keeping an inventory for our supplies to where, quite frankly, it scared our employees, giving them the impression we didn’t have the PPE they needed. But we basically made it to where if a staff member needed an N95 mask, they would have to go to a supervisor. Now we did very good with getting PPE, but the one thing we did struggle with in getting was non-sterile plastic gowns. We were going through a burn rate of 1,500 to 1,800 of them a day.

“During the beginning of this pandemic, we had limited staff, and most elective procedure offices were shut down,” he went on to say. “But we had on staff member, Sheldon Maddox, who created a template of making a gown out of plastic. This is not an exaggeration, we then bought 1.4 million square feet of plastic, and for five to six weeks straight, in the basement of our hospital, we had employees who hand cut out and hot glued 35,000 gowns for our hospital to use. Without them and that creative process we wouldn’t have got through it.”

Briscoe said the second challenge and toughest was limiting visitation.

“That was the hardest thing for me, and really for those patients who had COVID and were in ICU; they were not allowed to have any visitors,” Briscoe said. “We know how important it is for loved ones to be there for their family members and help with the healing process. We went to our ethics committee to get a different perspective on the visitation policy as well. But it boiled down to keeping our staff safe and protected so that they could provide that care.”

Hartley did announce that they have been able to ease the visitation policy to where it is open daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., but still not allowing visitors into COVID-19 patient rooms. Patients can now have a visitor in the emergency department as well.

“We are at more of a normalcy now than before,” Hartley said. “We are back to full operation of all services and have surge plans in place. But we also have plans in place should we see a second wave. We are continuing to screen at the door, and I believe we are going to continue that well into next year. Again, in order to beat this virus completely, we ask all to continue to follow the CDC guidelines, and we are hopeful that we can get more normalcy back.”

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